I realize that free syndication is a BIG reason that YouTube has had such explosive growth over it’s other competitors, but I think they could start micro-charging like Amazon is for S3 and make a decent profit. I think people would pay to syndicate YouTube video if it cost pennies per video. That’s just my random light bulb of the day. Maybe keep a lower bound so if you have less than 10 views for a video on your site, it’s free. Then the question is how much of their bandwidth is used off site versus on YouTube itself (I’m assuming that advertising can pick up a large part of the bill for viewers at YouTube). And then how many videos hosted on blogs like FatMixx actually get viewed? If it’s a large percentage with only 1 or 2 views, then maybe this wouldn’t work. But if there are videos with 20-infinity views on average, a small micro-charge per gigabyte might not be terrible.

Just my random thought for the day.

Donald Rumsfeld made a speech to the American Legion a few days ago that compared those who disagree with the White House policy on the war with the Chamberlains of pre-WWII England. This is a typical tactic used by the White House to change the subject on any debate that shows how bad their policies are. Simply attack the messenger instead of the message.

It's actually a small part of Rumsfeld's speech, about two-thirds of the way down in the transcript. The bullet list of "when will you stop beating your wife" rhetorical questions are actually more appalling than the Chamberlain references, but Olbermann, a fan of getting history right, and not a fan of this administrations handling of the war, completely blasted Rumsfeld in a rare editorial on his news show. You can see the video at Crooks and Liars or simply watch it below.

It's worth watching until the end. The Murrow quote he finishes up with is timeless.

From Atrios

Just saw on Amazon that the second season DVDs for Lost are coming out on September 5th. I think Josh and some other folks were asking me. You can pre-order today and Amazon will probably deliver by the 6th. Just click on the image to go to Amazon.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I’m home today sitting in front of the newest addition to the toy family, a 40″ Samsung LCD HDTV that does 1080p. Now, I still haven’t found a source that can push the TV at 1080p, but this TV is as future-proof as I can get right now. Even though this TV isn’t a 50+ inch behemoth like my mom’s TV, it still commands the room it’s in.

I haven’t really used the TV enough to do a full review, but so far it’s been great. The TV is hooked up via a set-top box to Comcast’s HD Cable service, an XBox 360, and my old Series2 Tivo. So far, I’m impressed with the HD sources and the Tivo looks as you might expect an SD source to look on a TV like this.

The XBox 360 is a surprisingly good upconverting DVD player. I thought it played HD-DVD disks, but that was a mistake (btw, anyone want an HD-DVD copy of Sky Captain?). HD-DVD capability is coming this year, so maybe I’ll get a chance to try it out. I’m watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith which looks really good.

A quick note on the XBox 360: I think Microsoft may have actually built a good product here. This might be the first one since they rolled out Windows 95. I’ve played Madden in HD on this TV at 1080i and it looks gorgeous. The online play looks pretty cool, and the always on nature of XBox Live seems like a really good idea.

I’ll write more about these things later, but I need to get back to work now. The bottom line right now is that I’m really happy, especially considering that I got the TV, XBox 360, Madden 07, and extra controller from Best Buy for right about $3100 and zero interest financing for 24 months. The price on the TV was $2559 after the discounts for the XBox 360 bundle deal, Comcast HD discount, and the discount I found on BestBuy.com. Not a bad deal all around.

• Samsung’s site for the LN-S4095D.

Sadly, we forgot our camera, but we wished we’d had it to take pictures of this gorgeous affair. Congrats to a wonderful bride and groom. Dan, post a picture or two soon!

I was googling something else and ran across this New Yorker review of The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport. The book looks interesting. From the review:

In “The Wages of Wins” (Stanford; $29.95), the economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook set out to solve the Iverson problem. Weighing the relative value of fouls, rebounds, shots taken, turnovers, and the like, they’ve created an algorithm that, they argue, comes closer than any previous statistical measure to capturing the true value of a basketball player. The algorithm yields what they call a Win Score, because it expresses a player’s worth as the number of wins that his contributions bring to his team. According to their analysis, Iverson’s finest season was in 2004-05, when he was worth ten wins, which made him the thirty-sixth-best player in the league. In the season in which he won the Most Valuable Player award, he was the ninety-first-best player in the league. In his worst season (2003-04), he was the two-hundred-and-twenty-seventh-best player in the league. On average, for his career, he has ranked a hundred and sixteenth. In some years, Iverson has not even been the best player on his own team. Looking at the findings that Berri, Schmidt, and Brook present is enough to make one wonder what exactly basketball experts—coaches, managers, sportswriters—know about basketball.

I wish I had taken statistics in college and some higher level economics. The mathematical tools that one gets in those classes would be really valuable when building fantasy tools for lay people, not just for professional sports teams or settling bar bets.

I wonder how you can measure the effectiveness of this algorithm, though. At least sabermetrics has proponents involved in Major League Baseball teams, so we can see the efficacy of those strategies at actually building teams. I’m curious about what teams, if any, in the NBA or other professional leagues will start taking a more rigorous mathematical approach to measuring talent. There’s risk obviously if it doesn’t work.

I was in Boston all day yesterday for my fantasy league’s draft. We do an in person auction draft using a point system and salary cap. Makes for a different sort of challenge than the traditional snake draft most online sites use.

In any case, the first set of analysis by our commissioners alter ego, Kimmelitis, came out today in the form of preseason power rankings. My team is the West Hartford Trees, and you’ll find me near the bottom at 10th place. Now, I didn’t have as strong a draft as I did last year, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t have one of the worst drafts.

I finished in second place, arguably could’ve easily won the championship if it weren’t week 17, and believed that I had the best starters on draft day. So where did the Power Rankings have me? In 9th place. I’m taking this year’s ranking, then, as a compliment.

In all fairness to the commish, the Kimmelitis features are one of the best things about being in NERFL. Nothing beats having an active commissioner who really enjoys making the game better for all the players.

I’ll be doing some more in depth analysis over the coming week on the league’s draft. Auction drafts aren’t covered as much as the more widely available online draft formats, so it’s hard to get a lot of insight into them online. The NERFL draft, while pretty unique, should offer some good insights into good auction strategy. After a third year in the league, I’m starting to see patterns emerge around the typical draft day questions: better to pay for 1 or 2 RB studs early or hold out for more mid-tier players and how to rate players’ draft day value.

My sister emailed me this morning asking to check up on her flights home. She also passed along the fact that she might miss her flights because Nepal was experiencing violent protests over a hike in fuel prices. The government thought it was a good idea there to raise fuel prices by up to 38%. Diesel rates went up 11% in one shot. I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea. If you wanted a reminder of why hard price floors and ceilings are a bad idea, Nepal provides a great example.

They’ve since backed down on the price hike so the protests have ended and my sister will be fine coming home.

… I take off my wedding ring and forget it at home. I get a call this morning from Heidi that basically went something like this:

Sujal: Hello?

Heidi: Are you trying to tell me something?

Sujal: What are you talking about?

Heidi: Are you trying to tell me something?

Sujal: What the hell are you talking about?

Heidi: Forget something?

At which point the light bulb goes on. Funnier still, I tried to play with my ring and was startled when I felt skin instead of metal. I guess that means I’ll probably play with it even after we’re no longer newlyweds.

But what better way to ring in my 30th birthday then with an…..

ICE LUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I saw this at a party once, and became obsessed with trying it out - though in a setting where I actually knew everyone. Thankfully Jason realized this dream and managed to organize my friends to suprise me with one at my bbq. Lessoned learned was don’t laugh while doing this, it will cause the booze to not reach your mouth and go flying into the air.)

ps - a very close second was my friend Ami bringing a Fudgie the Whale cake. It complimented Chhavi’s mango cake very nicely.

For those of you that were shut out of Google Analytics when I posted my review a while back, you can now try out the service. Google Analytics has reopened registration and you can sign up now along with AdWords.